1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to diffractive optical element (DOE) based optical systems of ultra-compact design capable of modifying the inherent elliptical, divergent, eccentric and astigmatic characteristics of laser beams produced from laser diode sources, such as visible laser diodes (VLDs).
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Laser diodes or visible laser diodes (VLD) are often used as light sources in many scientific and engineering applications. While laser diodes offer significant advantages over other laser sources, e.g. gas lasers, in terms of efficiency, size, and cost, they nevertheless suffer from several undesirable optical characteristics, namely: high beam divergence, elliptical beam profile, and astigmatism. In order to use laser diodes in many communication, data-storage, scanning, and imaging applications, these inherent deficiencies in laser diodes must be corrected.
While complex refractive-optics type systems (employing anamorphic lenses and the like) have been developed for the purpose of correcting for laser diode characteristics, such systems are generally bulky and expensive, and thus ill-suited for use in numerous applications.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,247,162 and B1 4,816,660 disclose the use of a lens and aperture-stop to shape the laser beam produced from a VLD for use in laser scanners. While this technique provides an inexpensive way of shaping the cross-section of a VLD laser beam, it does so at the expense of a substantial loss in beam power. Moreover, this “pinhole” technique is incapable of correcting for astigmatism in laser beams produced by VLDs.
In recent years, alternative approaches to VLD beam shaping and correction have been developed. Such alternative techniques include, for example, the use of: integrated-optics lenses; computer-generated hologram (CGH) gratings; micro-Fresnel lenses; waveguide optics; and holographic optical elements (HOEs).
The use of HOEs for beam collimation, shaping/profiling and astigmatism-correction has received great attention, as such devices can be made inexpensively and small in size to be used in CD-ROM players, consumer-products and analytical instruments employing VLDs and the like. Examples of prior art laser diode beam-correction techniques employing HOEs are disclosed in the following journal articles: “Efficient Beam-Correcting Holographic Collimator For Laser Diodes” by A. Aharoni, et al., published in Vol. 17, No. 18, OPTICS LETTERS, Sep. 15, 1992, at pages 1310–1312; “Beam-Correcting Holographic Doublet For Focusing Multimode Laser Diodes” by A. Aharoni, et al., published in Vol. 18, No. 3, OPTICS LETTERS, Feb. 1, 1993, at pages 179–181; and “Design of An Optical Pickup Using Double Holographic Lenses” by Hiroyasu Yoshikawa, et al., published in SPIE, Vol. 2652, 1996, at pages 334–340.
While the above-cited prior art publications disclose dual-HOE optics systems for beam-collimation, beam-shaping and astigmatism correction, such prior art design methods do not enable the design and construction of laser beams having any degree of astigmatism, focal-distance, spot-size, focused-spot aspect-ratio, and zero dispersion. These are critical requirements in many laser scanning bar code reading applications.
Prior art HOE-based systems do not address the fact that commercial VLDs suffer from beam eccentricity (i.e. poor beam pointing characteristics). Consequently, it has not been possible to successfully carry out many design objectives by virtue of the fact that assumptions made during system design are not satisfied during design realization.
Accordingly, there is a great need in the art for an improved method of designing and constructing optical systems for modifying the elliptical, divergent, eccentric and astigmatic characteristics of laser beams inherently produced from commercial-grade laser diodes, while avoiding the shortcomings and drawbacks of prior art systems, devices, and methodologies.